LOS ANGELES — Whether outside linebacker Trent Murphy is Stanford’s best player and top NFL prospect is subject to debate, but this much is beyond dispute: On a team that relishes old-school football, that batters and bludgeons opponents, Murphy is the meanest, nastiest, orneriest player on the roster.

Just ask … well, everyone.

“It’s not even close,” coach David Shaw said. “Shayne Skov is unbelievably intense. But Trent is in his own category. I’m just glad it’s not directed at us.”

Skov, the fiery linebacker who sports a Mohawk and wears eye black, readily admits he’s no match for Murphy on the nasty scale.

“He’s actually softened up since he got here,” Skov said. “He was like a wolf that’s brought into the pound and, surrounded by other dogs, becomes more like one of them.”

The dogs thought enough of the wolf to name him a captain for the 2013 season. Always one of the last players off the practice field, Murphy is polite to a fault, self-deprecating and introspective. He even has “a goofy side,” according to Skov.

But when the fifth-year senior steps on the field and flips the switch, destruction is sure to follow. His nickname is Yeti, for the Abominable Snowman.

“He’s one of the guys who, once in while, you’re not sure: Will he go over the edge? But he never does,” Shaw said. “What he has, you can cultivate, but you can’t manufacture.”

Murphy, a first-team All-American who is second in the nation in sacks, acknowledges his nasty streak — and does it with a smile. It comes from his father, Jerry, a plumbing contractor, recreational weightlifter and former construction worker who adheres to a simple credo: No work, no eat.

Jerry and Laurie Murphy raised seven children in the Lehi community of Mesa, Ariz., a former farming pocket with an Old West flavor. They taught the kids “to look a sucker in the eye, give a firm handshake and let ’em know a Murphy was there,” Jerry said.

Asked to describe his father’s methods for instilling discipline, Murphy recalled spending hours cleaning the family’s 1.5-acre backyard — a task that included collecting enough dog excrement to fill a garbage can. Jerry surveyed the work and deemed it substandard.

He then dumped out the dog feces and ordered Murphy to do it all over again.

“My dad’s the meanest guy I’ve come across,” he said. “I’d be a carbon copy of him if I could.”

Murphy grew up riding horses and roping steers. As a teenager, he skinned a rattlesnake.

At 14, he was given the nickname Rhino by his teammates at Brophy Prep. “He hit the seniors so damned hard they had to tell him to calm down,” Jerry said.

Although Murphy briefly wrestled a 400-pound steer calf a few years ago during a visit home, he prefers extreme sports (snowboarding, free climbing) for an adrenaline rush.

Either that, or pummeling blockers and quarterbacks.

Murphy rarely draws a yellow flag, but his victims are usually in need of a white one.

“After he first got to Stanford, (Jim) Harbaugh called and said, ‘What the hell am I going to do with him?’ ” Jerry said.

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